What Is A “Transit Oriented Community,” Anyways? – Toronto Realty Blog
Can we have a TOC?
Fair warning: it’s a serious talk.
It’s one of those “adult TOCs.”
For the record, I never had one of those “adult TOC’s” about the birds and the bees with my parents when I was younger. I didn’t need to. I learned all that from the movie Porky’s which we owned on a Beta-Max cassette and watched religiously, but I digress, and then some…
The “adult TOC” I want to have today is about something that might scare you more than I scared my 5-year-old daughter when she asked, “How does a baby get out of a mummy’s tummy?” and I gave her the straight answer.
“Ewwwwwwwwwww!”
That was my daughter’s response.
And that’s been the response to these “Transit Oriented Communities” thus far, so let’s talk about TOC’s, shall we?
I grew up in Leaside and as a child, I frequented Yonge & Eglinton. The Cinnabon at the Eglinton subway station was my favourite joint, with Edward’s Record World on Yonge Street being a close second. But there was a period of about four to five years back in high school when I didn’t to Yonge & Eglinton, I’m not sure exactly why, but there was a long stretch where I didn’t visit. And when I went back up there after all that time, I was absolutely flabbergasted at what they built.
“They built a city,” I told my Dad.
Silvercity, to be exact, no pun intended but that’s just the way the story goes. The late-90’s were around the time that mega-movie “Cineplexes” were replacing the small, independent theatres, and imagine a series of 2-storey buildings on Yonge making way for massive structures with billboards on top of them.
It blew my mind.
So what then would Yonge & Eglinton do to a person’s mind today who hasn’t been there since the early-2000’s?
More than two decades ago, the largest building you’d have found at Yonge/Eg was the TVO building on the east side, south of Eglinton, where the old Canada Square theatre was. The rest of the buildings were all 2-3 storeys. Yonge/Eg is now dominated by towers, many of them 60 or 70 storeys. The area I knew growing up is long, long gone. “Shark City” nightclub, of my bartending fame, circa 1999, is a condo. And by that, I mean the entire building that once stood there was torn down and a 697-unit building was constructed in its place.
Was it merely a matter of time before Yonge & Eglinton was transformed?
This location is, to many people, “the nucleus of midtown.” Would we have been naive to think that residential living would not explode in this area?
Perhaps there’s no better place for a metropolis than a cross-section like Yonge & Eglinton. Once upon a time, I might have suggested Yonge & Bloor, since that’s the intersection of two subway systems, but when the Eglinton LRT is completed, I think Yonge & Eglinton will be just as busy an intersection for public transit purposes, and history has already shown that it’s dominating residential living.
So where else can we build these small cities at intersections?
Anywhere, it would seem.
On July 21, 2020, when absolutely nobody was paying attention, the Ontario government passed the Transit Oriented Communities Act, “to enable the construction of vibrant communities centred around transit stations along the routes of the province’s four priority subway projects.”
From The Act:
The Lieutenant Governor in Council may, by order in council, designate land as transit-oriented community land if, in the opinion of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, it is or may be required to support a transit-oriented community project.
Alrighty-then!
But how about this little ditty thereafter:
Delegation to Metrolinx
(4) The Minister may, by regulation, delegate the Minister’s powers under subsection (1) in whole or in part to any of the following entities, subject to any conditions and restrictions set out in the regulation:
1. Metrolinx.
2. A public body, within the meaning of the Public Service of Ontario Act, 2006, that is prescribed for the purpose of this section by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. 2020, c. 35, Sched. 3, s. 2.
Ah, Metrolinx!
Building our cities one day (late) at a time!
Maybe we should get Bombardier involved too? I kid, I kid, for those in the know…
So the provincial government passes legislation that allows itself to designate certain areas to be ridiculously and uncharacteristically dense, and then what?
September 17th, 2021:
“Ontario Announces Two Transit-Oriented Coummnities For The Yonge North Subway Extension”
Their press release:
TORONTO – The Ontario government is proposing to build two vibrant communities at Bridge and High Tech stations – along the Yonge North Subway Extension – that would help create more housing, more jobs and space for recreation and leisure within walking distance of the TTC’s extended Line 1.
“By working with our municipal and regional partners, our Government is unlocking a once-in-a-generation opportunity to integrate critical subway and community planning along the Yonge North Subway Extension that will transform the area for decades to come,” said Stan Cho, Associate Minister of Transportation. “We are moving beyond the ‘park and ride’ model and creating communities built around transit: this will bring jobs and housing closer to stations, lower commutes for workers, increase ridership and build critical infrastructure at a lower cost to taxpayers.”
Consultations with the City of Richmond Hill, the City of Markham, the City of Vaughan and York Region are currently underway, with public consultations beginning later this Fall.
The transit-oriented communities at Bridge and High Tech Stations would include commercial, office and retail space to support approximately 14,000 new jobs in the region. The proposed communities would be served by the future Yonge North Subway Extension, GO regional service, VIVA Rapid Transit and the encompassing major highways.
“Vibrant communities,” eh?
Is that what you would call it?
In a recent CBC News story, it was called something else: “a condo wasteland.”
Two weeks ago, we saw this story in the CBC:
“They’re Called ‘Transit-Oriented Communities.’ But To Some GTA Residents, They’re A Condo Wasteland”January 20thCBC News
From the article:
Some residents and municipal leaders are concerned two large-scale developments the Ontario government is planning along the Yonge North Subway Extension in Richmond Hill and Markham will bring too much density to the area.
“It’s effectively going to be a condo wasteland,” said Graham Churchill, a Richmond Hill resident since 2005.
The developments are part of the province’s plan to increase the supply of homes as a solution to bring down the soaring price of housing, which likely will be an election issue. That includes fast-tracking transit projects in the Greater Toronto Area and creating mixed-use areas around the transit hubs called “transit-oriented communities (TOCs)” to reduce urban sprawl. The government is partnering with developers who will foot much of the cost of the infrastructure.
The High Tech subway station TOC will bring 33 towers — some of them 80 storeys tall — to the Richmond Hill site north of Highway 407 and east of Yonge Street. The Bridge subway station TOC will bring 34 high-rises to the Markham site just south of Highway 407 and east of Yonge Street .
The developments are expected to bring in about 80,000 new residents overall, according to York Region.
80 storeys!
But the storeys aren’t the story.
33 towers!
That’s the story and it’s only half the story, since there’s going to be 33 towers at the Richmond TOC and 34 towers ad the Markham TOC.
TOC about a lot of condos!
So what do 80,000 new residents do to an area like this?
Well, for one thing, it dramatically changes the skyline:
So here’s my question: where’s the grocery store? Where’s the massage therapist? How about the dentist?
If 80,000 people are going to live here, where are the school(s), plural?
And what comes first: the chicken or the egg?
I have a hard time believing that supporting infrastructure will arrive before these condos are built, so I think it’s fair to say that this area will be a construction nightmare with little amenities for the better part of a decade.
But what are other options?
As I write this post on Tuesday afternoon, I have eight offers on a downtown condo and I’m being asked my colleague, “Only eight?”
That’s where our market is, folks. Only eight.
And one-hundred thousand dollars more than I told these sellers their place was worth last fall.
There are 26 offers on a house that my colleague is offering on right now and you can hear the 401 from the backyard.
That’s where our market is, folks.
Toronto Realty Blog has been a sounding board for absurd market activity thus far in 2022, so here we are, talking about seventy new condominium towers on the way, and I have the audacity to question the project?
Isn’t this a solution?
Build, build, build! No matter what they build, just build it. That’s the only cure to our housing crisis.
But there are going to be critics of these TOC’s, whether they are real-estate-owning NIMBY’s or wanna-be property owners.
Noted Globe & Mail architecture critic, Alex Bozikovic, published his take on this today:
“With Doug Ford’s Developments Plans For Toronto Suburbs, Sometimes Big Is Too Big”February 1st, 2022Globe & Mail
From the article:
For now, these two sites on Yonge Street are nothing special. The site of the planned Bridge station is industrial land just south of Highway 7 and the parallel Highway 407. The High Tech station site is a retail power centre just to the north.
To be clear, these are good places for development. York Region has spent years planning for these areas to become “transit-oriented communities” with high density. The Ford government’s decision to extend the Yonge subway adds to a GO Train station, and existing and future bus rapid transit lines.
The logic is solid: Put people near transit, and they will take transit rather than drive. And when you put enough people together, they can support retail and other amenities within walking distance. Such efforts, especially in the job-rich city of Toronto, deserve widespread support.
But these plans, created by the Toronto architecture firms IBI Group and BDP Quadrangle and planners Bousfields Inc. and WND Associates, stretch that logic to absurdity. The High-Tech site would include 33 towers with 21,000 homes, plus retail and enough offices for about 7,000 jobs. One single block there would include three towers of 60 storeys and three of 80 storeys. The Bridge plan is comparable. Parks are thin. There are no schools. This would be one of the densest clusters of development in the entire region.
This demands a gut check: Does it make sense? These new districts would be surrounded by single-family houses and townhouses, along with the massive highway corridor. Almost nothing is within walking distance.
If these are going to be urban places, they’re going to be built from scratch. And that is very hard. It requires a mix of housing, shops and services and community centres, a variety of building forms, good-quality public space, and careful design.
It’s a great take and I honestly can’t disagree.
The problem is: I have no other solutions to the housing crisis and I don’t know how else we can get houses and condos built in order to sustain the population growth for the next two decades.
In a perfect world, maybe all these lands would see single-family dwellings built. Freeholds. Actual houses. But those houses would easily cost over $1,000,000 and would come with double-car garages, whereas these condos in the TOC’s are built specifically to allow residents to use public transit! To build houses would seem to defeat the purpose.
I have a feeling that every single TRB reader who comments today will say, “I would never want to live there.”
But does that mean these TOC’s shouldn’t be built?
At some point, we’re going to have to build “properties that people don’t want to live in” simply so that people can live there.
When I worked at Celestica in 2001, all the employees in my department lived in the suburbs. They all lived there. And why? Because they couldn’t afford the same property here in Toronto, and they made a choice. They bragged about their Sunday barbecues with the neighbours and talked up a storm about the local soccer games at the parks with their kids, but if you caught them alone for two minutes, and forced them to honestly answer the question, “Would you rather have the same house in Toronto?” what do you really think they would answer?
My point is that at every moment of time, in every market, there are areas that are more desirable than others, but that doesn’t mean you don’t create, build, or support those less-than-desirable areas.
Those houses that my colleagues owned twenty years ago may have been in sub-divisions without a single tree over five-feet high at the time, but today? That’s prime real estate! Those houses would have 15, 20, 25 offers if they were on the market today!
So today, we might turn up our noses at Transit-Oriented Communities, or TOC’s, but what will we say in twenty years? Perhaps we’ll look back and say, “Wow, what an incredible idea and such foresight!”
That’s tough to envision now, I know. But perhaps we should give it a chance.
And perhaps the province should mandate proof of residency for buyers of these pre-construction TOC’s to ensure they’re serving their purpose and not being bought by foreign interests?
Ouch!
I just burned my finger on that button reading “topic,” which was hot. So, so unlike me…
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